rustlingleafpress

The further adventures of Mr. Lonely Sock

Thank you to everyone who came and voted for Mr. Lonely Sock last week! We are now that much closer to have Mr. Lonely Socks date all sorted out. Last weeks winner was Lara's entry #3:

"Sultry cashmere sock seeks solemate for walks in the park, cuddling up cables by the fire, and ribbing on the go. Decorative heel flaps are a plus! Acrylic's need not apply."

Her sock will go onto the finals with all the other contestants.

This week the lovely hopefuls are:

1. Sock, reappeared from black hole, all alone, wants partner for friendship, symmetry and sense of belonging. Lost wearer, and meaning. Needs matching friend to continue on life's journey. No gloves, mittens or toppers need apply!

2. I've never answered one of these ads before, but you got my attention. Earthtones are my favorite color, and I love cuddling, keeping my sweetheart warm. Fireplaces on a chilly eve? Lights my fire. A sunset over the ocean with you? What could be nicer. I'll go anywhere with you, and I think we'll make a perfect pair! Wool you be mine?

3. I am looking for the perfect handsome sock -- the finer your gauge, the better. Willing to go toe up or top down. Love of outdoor activities a must -- are you a golf sock? A cycling sock? Please include a swatch with yoru response.

4. Lonely sock seeks same. Must love fiber, cold feet and be a little twisted. Hoping for long term committed relationship, with trips to LYS and leisurely mornings perusing online fiber sites over a steamy romantic coffee. Only the serious need respond.

5. Man seeks "Right" Mate Sole survivor seeks the "right" mate to make a perfect match. Seeks someone with lots of visual interest but not too complicated.

 

Again, please e-mail me at thesockreport@gmail.com if any of these are yours!

Mr Lonely Sock part deux

For those following us, we have tallied the votes from last week and the entry that will go into the finals  is:

"Knee High Seeking Solemate Beautiful and strong knee high looking for knee high to go the distance with. Are you warm and cuddly, maybe even a little cashmere in your blood? Do you love long hikes in the winter and cuddling afterward? Do you want to have a drawer full of anklets to call your own? Put your best foot forward and let's get a leg up on making our dreams come true!"

In this installment of the Lonely Sock saga, we continue the search for the perfect mate. To help all our readers in finding the right mate, we have the photo Mr. Lonely Sock sent us with his ad.

Isn't he a winner? So who will be the lucky sock this time? The rules are the same as last week. Each entry has a number, in order to vote leave the number(s) in the comments. Whoever has the highest number of votes will move on to the next round when the next batch is published. The top entries from each group will then have a lightening round, and the top ones will get prizes!

1. I am an orange Jaywalker with touches of bright yellow! I am all German Opal yarn! Och! We can trip the light fantastic and make absolutely gorgeous music together! Oh, please pick me!

2. Mature colorwork sock (suffering from second sock syndrome) looking to complete a pair. Not interested in walks on the beach or dips in hot springs, but quite keen on dancing. Must be durable and long wearing.
    (entry from www.lapetitetricoteuse.com)

3. Sultry cashmere sock seeks solemate for walks in the park, cuddling up cables by the fire, and ribbing on the go. Decorative heel flaps are a plus! Acrylic's need not apply.
    (entry from http://sockknittinglara.blogspot.com/)

4. Single female sock, looking for earthy partner with a soul/sole. Interests include cables (sigh), dropped stitches (oooh), and the thrill of a well-worked partridge eye heel. Seeking a warm, woolen match to keep me company on those long winter nights, snuggled up by the fire.

5. Stylish, form-fitting knee-high seeking a matching coordinate for nature hikes and adventures. Self-striping a must!
    (entry from Stephania)

Again, our webhosting software ate all the e-mail addresses. Therefore we will have to do this on the honor system. If you see your entry, please let us know by e-mailing us at thesockreport@gmail.com with the text of the entry and your contact info, thanks!

Mr Lonely Sock needs your help!

When we launched The Sock Report at the beginning of June, we put up a fun little contest; reply to our Mr. Lonely Sock ad.

Mr Lonely Sock got so many replies, he is having a hard time making a decision. Please help him figure out who will end his lonely sock existence.

To help him, we will post all of the sock personals here on our page 5 per week. Each entry will have a number, in order to vote leave the number(s) in the comments. Whoever has the highest number of votes will move on to the next round when the next batch is published. The top entries from each group will then have a lightening round, and the top ones will get prizes!

Unfortunately our webhosting software ate the e-mail addresses. We hope they are enjoying their meal. Therefore we will have to do this on the honor system. If you see your entry, please let us know by e-mailing us at thesockreport@gmail.com with the text of the entry and your contact info, thanks!

1. SMS looking for lovely and lonely HO (half-object). Enjoys long hikes in quality shoes and the thrill of static while rug shuffling. Are you the mate that will finally complete this pair?

2. fair isle sock looking for life long solemate. would love to find that special sock to dance and share knitting secrets. R U the 1?

3. Lonely sock - your solemate is here. Widowed green sock in corriedale/mohair blend in a pattern similar to yours - I hope you wouldn't mind being seen out as an odd pair. Personally, I think it charming. Love to dance; hate moths.

4. Knee High Seeking Solemate Beautiful and strong knee high looking for knee high to go the distance with. Are you warm and cuddly, maybe even a little cashmere in your blood? Do you love long hikes in the winter and cuddling afterward? Do you want to have a drawer full of anklets to call your own? Put your best foot forward and let's get a leg up on making our dreams come true!

5. Slightly used lime green sock seeks solemate: prefers entrelac, bright hues, and must have all cables crossed correctly (if you get my drift). Love to live on the wild side in a hot tub, so a super wash partner would be a bonus.

We hope you have as much fun reading these as we have!

Behind the scenes at a photo shoot

The beautiful photography really helped make our first issue of The Sock Report lovely.  We don't all wake up and shoot gorgeous snapshots though, there is primping, and ironing and driving to locations involved - truly glamorous stuff! 

Before our professional photographer arrived, we went out and scouted our locations and did preliminary photoshoots, in some cases 2 or 3 prelim shoots at the same location.  All of the locations featured in the first issue of The Sock Report were in or near our home base of Eugene , Oregon.  The beach shots were done at the Heceta Head Lighthouse beach, and the others were done in the world famous gardens of Hendricks Park.  We were lucky that it was the height of the Rhododendron / magnolia blooming season.  But shooting in Oregon in the spring is not without risks - you may not have noticed, but the entire beach photo shoot was done in the rain.  Our photographer spent hours erasing raindrops from those photos to make them as gorgeous as possible.  The models huddled under umbrellas when they weren't on camera, and then bravely went out and smiled while rain pelted them in the face.  I think they did an amazing job.

Professional photography is about more than just pose, point and shoot.  Our photographer came with lots of sneaky equipment to make everyone look natural and yet perfect at the same time.  See that big white canopy thing that our assistant is holding?  That's called a sunswatter, and it works like a whitebox to diffuse the harsh light/shadow you get in direct sun shooting.  We also had two assistants holding the big shiny dots, those are reflectors that you can use to catch sunlight and re-direct it.  So if a model's face is overshadowed, you can bring some light to it without using floodlights and such.  If you're feeling particularly evil you can aim it just right to blind the model with a piercing bit of sun (not that we ever did that of course!).

When you're shooting sock photos you have to think about how the model is going to walk over to where she's posing without getting the socks all dirty, so you lay out a little towel carpet and then whisk it away before the photographer has to lay on his belly in the mud to get just the right angle.

Our models were intrepid.  We asked them to stand on logs, and fences and pillars of mossy stone, and to get into the most unnatural positions in order to look natural.  Sometimes they had to balance on one foot, and other times they used their best ballet maneuvers at the edge of drop.  All the while smiling and looking like they just loved their knitwear.  (Which they did of course!)  They also filled in as assistants when they were not in front of the camera.  Here is Miriam helping mother nature look her best - good thing we thought to bring some scissors!

Photo shoot days are long and tiring.  That's why we always end them off with dinner and ice cream!  And then we toodle home to bed so we can get up and look gorgeous again.

Now that we have our first issue under our belt, we have lots of ideas for fun photo shoots for the next issue.  We can't wait to show you!

 

From the bottom of our hearts

Whew!  As you can imagine, it's been a whirlwind over here at The Sock Report World Headquarters since we launched The Sock Report.  The response has been overwhelming and fantastic, and I just want to thank everyone who took the time to email me from the bottom of my heart, you all make it so worthwhile!

We have been living with The Sock Report for 6 months now, and we have become intimately acquainted with every possible nook of the magazine.  So by the time we launched we had no perspective left.  It's so great to see that, in fact it was as special as we thought!

We want to take the time to thank all of our designers who took a chance on an unproven venture and entrusted us with one of their valued patterns, they really make The Sock Report special.  Luckily I think I had just enough credibility to convince them that The Sock Report would rock, and I think we have!

I also want to thank all of our intrepid test knitters!  These folks test-drove the patterns so that we could make sure they were all up to snuff.  They made owlies and lacy shawls, sweet sweaters and lots of socks.  Some of them even knit two patterns for us!  We love our test knitters and we couldn't have done it without them!  So Bravo to all our testers!

Our photographer, Ben Wheeler, did an awesome job making the knitwear look delicious and irresistable, don't you think?  In the coming weeks we'll show you some outtakes  and some of the more picturesque shots that didn't make it into the magazine because they were too grand in scale and you couldn't see the knitwear from so far a distance.  Unfortunately, even on the internet, we have a limited amount of space to present things so we had to go with close ups and crops.  But our locations were gorgeous so we're excited to share.  Just because we think these shots are so lovely, we're releasing one of them each month as a desktop calendar.  If you like it, you can click on the photo and set it as your desktop - you'll want to set it centered, not tiled.  Here's June's calendar for you.

Large (1600 x 900) (good for most desktops)

Small (940 x 608) good for small monitors and ipad

Please respect our copyright and do not crop or alter these images or redistribute them.

We had lots of great responses to our Mister Lonely Sock advertisement.  We'll post some of the best answers here in the coming weeks as well. 

So, thanks again, from the bottom of our hearts.  We're toddling off for a long summer's nap, but we'll be back soon with more cool things to share!

Come join The Sock Report on Ravelry!

The Sock Report now has a home on Ravelry.  This is where we'll have KAL's host our ravelympics team and answer questions about each issue.  We're planning lots of fun things on Ravelry!

Today's contest is another guesser.  Can you guess which sock yarn this is?  To enter your guess and take part in the random drawing from among the correct answers go here.  Good luck!

Yesterday's winner was Maaike!  Congratulations - you win a complete collection of The Sock Report, vol. 1

Who is your favorite sock designer?

When The Sock Report launches in the next week, you'll be able to view and purchase the patterns online.  But we also have a print version debuting in late June.  That version will be less like a magazine, and more like a pattern booklet and will be available in yarn shops across North America.  If you're a yarn shop, you can order the booklet directly from Unicorn Books.  It's 96 pages of beautiful patterns to use with sock yarn.

Today's contest is another question.  Winner will be chosen randomly from among those who respond. 

Who (besides Janel of course - heheh) is your favorite sock designer?

To enter the contest, please go here and record your answer.  Good luck to all!

Congratulations to Martha Johnson, she is yesterday's random prize winner!  She wins a copy of the complete collection of Sock Report vol. 1. 

 

The Sock Report is not just about socks...

Although it has "sock" in the title, The Sock Report is not just about socks. Yes, we have socks in there! But we also have shawls, scarves, sweaters and toys. There are so many things you can do with sock yarn that it's kind of mind boggling. Sometimes a sock yarn just begs to be something different. So even if you're not a sock fanatic, the sock report probably has something you'll love to knit. And everybody loves sock yarn, right? Today's Sock Yarn Countdown Contest is actually a poll rather than a quiz. We'd like to know, do you prefer toe-up or top down socks? Enter here for a random prize drawing. Yesterday's contest was a stumper... no one was able to correctly guess the yarn which was Alysha Goes Around, Tiding of Magpies. So we chose a winner randomly instead. The winner is: Nicole Simmons. Congratulations Nicole, you win a limited edition Sock Report kit keeper project bag!

Imagine a place dedicated to supporting designers

Here at The Sock Report we love our yarn, we love our customers, and we love designers!  We work with independent designers and we feel strongly they should be compensated fairly for all the hard work they put into creating a design, writing a pattern and making sure it works.  That's why The Sock Report pays a royalty to the designer on every single sale we make.  So knitters can feel assured that when they purchase a single pattern, or an entire collection, from The Sock report, they are supporting the livelihood of an independent designer.  We feel good about that, and we think you will too.

Today's Sock Report Contest:

Can you guess what sock yarn this is?  (hint: it actually has sparkly silver in it, and it doesn't start with "S").  To enter the contest, please go here and enter your guess!

Congratulations to our Day 2 Contest Winner - Jan ter Heide!  He correctly guessed that yesterday's sock yarn was Socktopus Sokkusu.  Jan wins a copy of the first Sock Report collection!

Imagine a place dedicated to pleasing customers

Here at The Sock Report headquarters, we not only love sock yarn, we love our customers!  The Sock Report is a magazine/collection of gorgeous patterns that all use sock yarn.  We've lived intimately with these patterns for months now and we think they're all winners, and we hope you think so too.  We think one of the best things about The Sock Report is our win/win pricing scheme.  Fall in love with a single pattern?  You can buy just that pattern for $6.50.  Fall in love with the whole collection?  You can buy all the patterns together for only $1 each!  Sound good to you?  It does to us too. 

We can't wait to show you our collection....  But you'll have to wait just a bit longer.....

In the meantime, we have Today's Sock Report Contest:

Can you guess what sock yarn this is?  (hint: it's not from the U.S., and it starts with "S").  To enter the contest, please go here and enter your guess!

Congratulations to our Day 1 Contest Winner - Nannette Donohue!  She correctly guessed that yesterday's sock yarn was Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock.  Nannette wins a limited edition Sock Report "kit keeper" project bag.